McCain camp unveils negative blitz

It was the McCain campaign’s most full-throttled effort to define Obama negatively, on its own terms, by creating a narrative intended to turn the public off to an opponent.

The New York Times

WASHINGTON — After spending much of the summer searching for an effective line of attack against Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. John McCain is beginning a newly aggressive campaign to define Obama as arrogant, out of touch and unprepared for the presidency.On Wednesday alone, the McCain campaign released a new advertisement suggesting — and not in a good way — that Obama is a celebrity along the lines of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Republicans tried to portray Obama as a candidate who believed the race was all about him, relying on what Democrats said was a completely inaccurate quotation. The Republican National Committee began a new anti-Obama Web site called Audacity Watch, a play on the title of Obama’s book “The Audacity of Hope.” And, in a concerted volley of television interviews, news releases and e-mail messages, campaign representatives attacked him on a wide variety of issues, including his tax policies and energy proposals.The moves represented the McCain campaign’s most full-throttled effort to define Obama negatively, on its own terms, by creating a narrative intended to turn the public off to an opponent. Although Obama has been under an intense public spotlight for the last year, he is still relatively new on the national scene, and polls indicate that for all the enthusiasm he has generated among his supporters, many voters still have questions about him, providing Republicans an opening to shape his image in critical groups like white working-class voters between now and Election Day.McCain’s campaign is now under the leadership of members of President Bush’s re-election campaign, including Steve Schmidt, the czar of the Bush war room that relentlessly painted Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts as effete, elite and equivocal through a daily blitz of sound bites and Web videos.The run of attacks against Obama over the last couple of weeks have been strikingly reminiscent of that drive, including the Bush team’s tactics of seeking to make campaigns referendums on its opponents — not a choice between two candidates — and attacking the opponent’s perceived strengths head-on. Central to the latest McCain drive is an attempt to use against Obama the huge crowds and excitement he has drawn, including on his foreign trip last week, by promoting a view of him as more interested in attention and adulation than in solving the problems facing American families.The intensity of the recent drive — which has included some assertions from the McCain campaign that have been widely dismissed as misleading — has surprised even some allies of McCain, who has frequently spoken about the need for civility in politics. The sentiment seeped onto television on Wednesday with Andrea Tantaros, a Republican strategist, saying on MSNBC that the use of Hilton in McCain’s commercial was “absurd and juvenile,” and that he should spend more time promoting his own agenda.Obama’s campaign seized on those concerns, portraying McCain as cranky and negative. Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, said McCain’s strategy to define Obama negatively in voters’ minds, while similar to one that successfully worked against Kerry, would not work this year.“When people are struggling, when they’re trying to pay their bills, when they’re concerned about their fundamental security, I don’t think they have much tolerance for Britney Spears and Paris Hilton,” Axelrod said. “I think they understand times are more serious than that, and they thought John McCain was, too.” McCain’s more focused assault comes after one of his worst weeks of the general election campaign, when he seemed to fumble for a consistent, overarching critique of Obama, who winged around the Middle East and Europe. McCain’s advisers continue to look for ways to bring more discipline to his message.